Best SATA III SSD?

I am not sure if it is funny, especially for the uninformed.

 

well actually i was sorta referring to chumps at another forum, one guy in particular who seems to know a ton about ssds; he's still set on the 240 vertex 3. but yeah, the statement applies to everyone.

i'm sure its not just me who wants reliability when spending $550 on a freakin hard drive. that's all these are after all.

 

Well, I'll give a shout out to performance over reliability for the simple fact that SSDs are only OS drives and nothing important ever goes there. And everything important is backed up off site.

That said, intermittent errors concern me more than outright failures and lost man hours troubleshooting drives me nuts.

Anand's article / review was very good. I wonder If I've got the darn Hynix chips in my vertex now.

 

Each to his own but I understand those people. It's the fastest SSD at a lower price than Intel 510. I wouldn't have any problem with buying it unless I was running a system with mission critical data on it. In that case I'd go with Intel x25m. There's no important data on my system though.

I know OCZ handles their RMAs well. I'd order my Vertex 3 at a trusted reseller so I can always get my money back in case of any persisting issues.

Paying more for a slightly slower product (Intel 510)? I'd rather not.

 

I have just bought a c300 256gb ssd for my new SATA III notbook. I know the c400 will be out in a week however the c300 is still way out ahead on 4k read and is not to far behind on its Seq reads and write speeds mean nothing to me. This drive has also had very few issues like the Vertex had. Maybe im wrong going for a older gen ssd ?

 

Yeah, wrong move going for 'older gen ssd'.

Ah well! Live and learn.

The best SATA3 SSD right now is the Intel 510 250GB version.

The real world usage is right up to the benchmark king - the V3 - without the associated headaches of dealing with SandForce and OCZ double talk.

 

It can be a good choice. It depends on how much you paid for it.

In real life usage the differences with the latest generation SSDs are very small:
Crucial m4 256GB SSD (C400) Review - Load Times

 

If you trust Anand, then the C300 is very good on Windows 7 for most users. Tiller does weird sequential reads/writes, so he's not normal and not representative of most users.

You won't ever want to use C300 outside of a Win 7 environment, though. One of the main reasons I didn't get one.

 

Huh??? O.O

Not that I will ever use any other OS other than Windows (8 in 2012! Yay!) but I've never heard of the C300 performing poorly on OSes other than W7. I'm not doubting you, but I'm just a little skeptical...

Could you please explain more? You can imagine this is a little worrying to me, a prospective C300 owner...

Mr. Mysterious

 

My experience with Vertex 3:

I did, here are the tests:



and




and videos here:

45 apps at the same time:
YouTube - Macbook Pro 15" 2011 - Vertex 3 SSD - Opening 45+ apps at the same time

Booting up:
YouTube - Macbook Pro 15" 2011 - boot up opening applications - i7 2.3Ghz, 8GB RAM, Vertex 3 SATA III

Vertex 3 vs old ssd:

YouTube - Macbook Pro 15" 2011 OCZ Vertex 3 benchmark - fastest SSD ever (watch in HD)

 

HOLY!!! @_@ Me want!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Seems like we may need SATA IV soon

 

Nice videos niithegoat.

You might be interested in running Black Magic disk test that's now available for OS X. You can compare scores with Vertex 3 on Windows:
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SSD Review - Black Magic Disk Test

 

This is probably the fastest SATA III SSD ever: OCZ is coming out with an extra fast Vertex 3 version dubbed MAX IOPS.

"it's not a secret, there is an enthusiast based SKU coming next week we hope. I do not have one yet, i have been told the 120GB version in this range is faster than the regular 120 Vtx3...after that i have no further info."
General Discussion Vertex 3 MAX IO partno

"The difference is that it uses 3Xnm toggle-mode flash vs. 2Xnm sync-mode flash which will yield higher performance. "
http://thessdreview.com/Forums/ssd-discussion/642.htm

 

Biggest question of all: WHERE TO GET ONE RIGHT NOW.
And I am saying any SSD for SATA III. My misery is, that I need min 240 GB. My system and programs alone are 162GB on my current disk (and that's only the programs that are essential to me).
Been trying to see if I cna get an intel 510 or Vertex 3 anywhere, made phone calls, but nobody has them in stock at that size. I can get a 320 like today....sucks.

 

New contender: The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 120GB SATA 3 SSD Review – This 120GB 6G SSD Absolutely Flies! | The SSD Review

 

So is there any problems with OCZ Vertex 3 if it is the best SSD right now?

 

For the Vertex 3 as far as I know it is the fastest SATA 3 SSD, not sure on SATA 2..but there aren't any problems with the drive SO FAR..Since we can't really say how reliable these drives are as of now..

 

So far so good. Initial customer reviews of the Vertex 3 are good, in US and Netherlands.

 

Yes, OCZ is the problem...... at least for me.

 

Regarding the vertex 3, I noticed a few posts back about the power consumption of these drives and thought I'd chime in. I have the 240GB vertex 3 in a macbook pro and have noticed a definite decrease in battery life. Using my previous drive (160GB X25-M), letting my laptop just idle at the desktop causes the estimated remaining indicator to show about 15 hours. With the vertex 3 installed, that number drops to 10 hours. Of course this is not the most useful test since the computer is just idle, but it's an indication of those high idle power figures other have alluded to. In terms of my actual usage patterns (web, office, xcode, itunes), I find my battery life lowered by about an hour, from 8 hrs with the x25-m to 7 hrs with the vertex 3.

Originally I thought it might be an issue with the OCZ drive but looking at OWC's spec page for their new drive, the idle/power numbers are also quite high. If maximizing battery life is one of your concerns, these new sandforce drives might not be for you.

 

Thanks for the information. They are obviously using a faster CPU which has a baseline power consumption noticeably higher than vertex 2, in order to active the performance.

Even Intel's 320 is slightly more power hungry than G2.

Why I am not too impressed by this new crops of drives, performance gain that can only be noticed at extreme situation at the expense of other more important things(at least for notebooks).

 

So what are you guys thinking about the Crucial C300 256 GB. It is not the fastes, but seems to be good on power consumption and has decent pricing. You can currently get it on amazon Marketplace from a non-featured vendor for under $400 (how trustful are these non-featured vendirs, anybody any experience?).

 

I still like the last gen, i.e. X25M or may be Samsung 470

 

So I can geth the

intel x25m at 160GB for about $285, which is $1.78/GB or
crucial c300 at 256gb for $374, which is $1.46/GB

Crucial is SATA III already, while Intel is known for it's reliability. Chimpanzee, any particular reason why you prefer the x25m over the crucial c300?

 

I have seen reported freeze problem about C300 and it being a repeated issues means there are minor compability(i.e. software bugs or whatever people want to call it). I just don't want to spend time to find out if my notebook would be hit or not.

May be it has already been fixed. If there is a definitive answer that firmware XXXX already fix it, I would have no hesitation.

To summarize, reliability is my top concern and I don't mind random lemon but known bugs are a no no to me unless it is well documented in the form of 'model X is not compatible with our SSD'.

 

Any idea where would be a good place to look for a compabilty chart? I do know that the intel is compatible with my notebook (envy) since it is shipped with it by HP, if ou decide to pay $600 for the 160GB intel .
Not sure how to find out about the crucial. And yes, I would agree, reliabilty is top concern for me as well.

 

few people have the freezing issue and for those that do, there's a firmware update coming out in about a week that will address the issue.

 

So you are saying you would choose the C300 over the X25M?

 

i have a c300 and am happy with it. i'd likely be happy with the x25m as well.

once you go SSD, it doesnt matter which you get, every one will be better than running a platter drive.

i will say that i made my decision largely on price. if i could have gotten a x25m or 320 for the price i paid i likely would have taken them over my c300. but as first mentioned, i'm 100% satisfied with my c300.

 

I'd take C300 over the X25m, even on SATA II. It's faster and going by the hundreds of Newegg reviews it's just as reliable.

If you have SATA III the advantage becomes even bigger.

As far as I know the stuttering has already been solved by changing some settings.

 

And with the C300 256 GB SSD 2.5" being only $420 at Newegg, it gets pretty compelling from a cost standpoint.

Perry

 

The new C400 256GB is only $454 at superbiiz.com

MTFDDAC256MAM-1K1 Micron 2.5 inch 256GB RealSSD C400 SATA3 Solid State Drive(MLC) - SSD Solid State Drives - SuperBiiz.com

PC Mark Vantage HDD Suite rates it faster than 2 C300's in Raid 0. This is testing real world normal use of your computer.

Crucial M4 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review ? Unexpected Performance in a Small Package | The SSD Review

 

That statement could be a bit misleading:
60951 - M4
58128 - 2xC300 256GB
55880 - 2xC300 64GB
55880 - 1xC300 64GB

Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to make of these scores.

 

Had a X-25M 160gb in my Dell E6410 (SATA-II) and got a C300 for my Dell E6420 (SATA-III) and once I disabled LPM or whatever it's called....the C300 FLIES. Installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 from USB in <12 minutes. Bootup, shutdown, everything is incredibly fast. I think unless you are a stats junkie....you'll be happy with a C300. I got it because bang for the buck, it was great. Was seriously considering a Vertex 3, but I got the C300 for $340 or so after eBay bucks, rebates, etc. $200 more for the Vertex? It's not that much better. LOL

 

what is LPM and how did you disable it?

google states its Link Power Management but i cant find any good info on it.

edit: oh it has to do with the stutter?
http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Solid-...eze-ups-in-Windows-7-solved-for-me/td-p/38766

I dont understand any of that registry editing instruction at that link. lol
Is it necessary if I don't experience stutter?

Do you guys recommend disable write cache buffering for the C300 or does it hurt performance?

 

Disabling the write cache will hurt performance on the C300.

 

That's a great price for the C400.

PC Mark Vantage isn't really real world. Hardwareheaven has real world benchmarks that confirm the C400 is faster than C300.

 

Do we know that the micron drive performs identically to the crucial one? What about reliability? I'm about to jump on that deal.

 

As far as I know they're identical.

Crucial's m4 solid-state drive - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

Cool, thanks

 

I have an Asus G73JW laptop and I'm looking for an SSD around 120-160GB. I'm looking to spend around $300. I'm debating between the Intel 510 120GB and the Intel 320. I've done some reading but still can't really tell the difference. Is the main difference that the 320 has slightly faster speed and is supposed to have a longer life? Are there any other recommended drives I should look at?

 

Okay, I've read this thread a bit and I'm still wondering something. c300, c400/m4, Vertex 3, or Intel 510?

 

This reviews shows the real world differences exactly:
Crucial m4 256GB SSD (C400) Review - Introduction

The C400 costs $455 for 256GB at superbiiz.com. It may be the best buy.

 

Nice link, looks like it's going to come down the m4 or the Intel 510. Thanks!

 

Will the m4 be available in 128gb?

 

It should, a couple of weeks ago the C400 on superbiiz had all sizes, 64/128/256/512, so i would asume the M4 should come with all sizes as well.

 

.............

 

Yes Sandforce 2 SSDs seem to be a little bit faster than the Marvell SSDs.

 

Crucial M4 is now available through Crucial.com in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB.

US: Crucial Solid-State Drives - Hard Drive replacement for notebook and netbook
Europe: Crucial.com Memory EU France - Solid-State Drives. Hard Drive replacement for notebook and netbook